I see her erratic movements early on, this Octomom look-alike in a black E-Class convertible, lip augmentation by Farmer John, sunglass lenses the size of drink coasters, steering the car with a sort of chopping-wood motion. She pulls alongside me, juggling a San Pellegrino and an iPhone while attempting to control the car. And then—she tries to cut me off! A sizable Mercedes feinting toward a CRX-sized gap, driven with an even smaller skill set.

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I'll have none of it. A squeeze of the throttle boxes her in neatly, and I give her the internationally recognized gesture for "What the @*&^% were you thinking?" Ms. Sausage Lips returns my scowl...and then returns to her texting, I'm guessing.

And what you're probably thinking is, what does this have to do with the 2013 GT-R Experience? Plenty. As I'm only about two Nadya Sulemans away from becoming a certified road-rager, a driving school of any sort is a much-welcomed catharsis, a blow-off valve for the bottled-up frustrations of Orange County commuting.

And Nissan has done GT-R owners proud here at Laguna Seca Raceway, the second of three driving events held at no cost to GT-R owners (the first was at Palm Beach International Raceway in Florida; the last is planned for Monticello Motor Club in New York). With tutelage from Skip Barber driving instructors, it's a day of lapping, autocrossing and other drills for owners in their personal cars, capped off with four or five laps in a Nissan-supplied 2013 GT-R. There are also a number of prospective GT-R buyers, hand-selected by Nissan dealers, in attendance. I'm just along for the ride, so to speak, one of a dozen or so journalists invited to attend and drive in 2012 GT-Rs. A real twist-my-arm scenario!!

It's a good-sized group. A Nissan spokesman said there were 78 total attendees, and I counted a total of 44 GT-Rs assembled for the group shot taken later in the day, the photographers swaying on a scissor-lift two stories up.

The GT-R felt a little like a bull in a china shop on the pinched-oval autocross course in the paddock, but it makes you marvel how a nearly 2-ton car can channel 530 bhp so effectively through all four contact patches. Instructors are attempting to communicate with us by radio, but turbo whoosh and adrenaline surge effectively muffle their pointers and pleas. On the fourth lap, I make out a sentence as I overcook my favorite left-hander. "That's still not workin' for ya, is it?" Which made me think of a famous PS page in Road & Track with a guy standing on an embankment, looking at his Ferrari 512 BB in the ditch. "Good tires," mused Bob, casually lighting a cigarette, "but certainly not great tires."

And a funny line from my co-worker Sam Mitani: "I'm just too much driver for this car!"

Next for our group was a braking drill on the track itself, into the hairpin known as Turn 2—a critical section as you're coming off the front straight and scrubbing off roughly 70 mph here. As the drill at first required coming to a full stop, I did my best full-ABS pedal tromp. "Wow," I said to Mike Monticello, my journalist friend riding shotgun, "I've never had that much tire smoke from an ABS stop" as the acrid stuff poured in through the open windows like a scene out of a Cheech and Chong movie. "Me either," said Mike. It turns out the ABS wasn't working quite as the engineers intended and I'd nicely flat-spotted an expensive Dunlop.

But it wasn't as bad as the journalist (who shall remain nameless) who did his best rallycross impression in Turn 4, the GT-R slipping off the track and disappearing in a roiling cloud of dust in full view of our vantage point maybe three car-lengths back. To his credit, he kept it straight and drove back on the track surface, but not before we picked up position. Granted, the generous 45-minute lapping sessions were all lead-follow with a Barber instructor as lead goose, but we're a competitive bunch.

It's a huge thrill to get into a car as powerful and competent as the GT-R on a historic track, and our final stint in the 2013 car was exactly 15 bhp more exciting: Output of the twin-turbo 3.8-liter V-6 has been increased to 545 bhp. The new 20-in. wheel design looks fantastic (and shows off the monster rotors and fixed calipers to great effect), and now there's a carbon-fiber rear wing whose exposed cloth weave pattern is unique to the GT-R. Whether a 2012 or 2013, the GT-R is a formidable, focused machine built to a purpose: undercut the Porsche 911 Turbo on price, yet beat it around Nürburgring's Nordschleife.

Laguna Seca, of course, is a wonderful alternative, especially through the Corkscrew (pick your reference tree so you land in the correct spot after the plunge) and the fast Turn 6 (the apex curbing appears just in time, as you pop over a slight rise). The GT-R seems to thrive on the abuse, one of those rare cars with a license plate that can be driven to a track, flogged repeatedly on that track without even wincing, and driven home.